Terrorists: the word from inside their minds

By ANNE SPECKHARD

26 July 2013 — 3:00am

Have you wondered what it would be like to talk to a terrorist? It's hard to imagine just being in the same vicinity of one, let alone staying at their houses, eating with them and having hour-long discussions.

Over the past decade, I have been researching the psychology of terrorists and, in doing so, I have interviewed more than 400 terrorists and extremists, their supporters, close family members and associates and, in the case of Beslan school massacre and the Nord-Ost Moscow theatre siege, spoke to the Russian hostages of the Chechen suicide terrorists.

One of the most common questions people are intrigued to know is: what is it like to talk to a terrorist?

It's both frightening and fascinating. I felt very privileged so many terrorist leaders and cadres agreed to talk to me and opened up about their inner thoughts and feelings.

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"As I journeyed through the West Bank and Gaza, I received invitations to avoid the checkpoints".Credit:Reuters

The truth is they started out as ordinary people just like you and me so, on some level, we were a lot alike.

I wanted to understand what takes normal people to put themselves on the terrorist trajectory, what keeps them on it and what can motivate them to believe that killing innocent civilians for any cause is ever a good thing.

I overcame my fear via my fascination with their descriptions of the experiences that drove them into terrorism.

In conflict zones such as Chechnya, Palestine and Iraq, many of the traumatic experiences they described were heartbreaking and I could understand (but never endorse) how they were drawn to groups that promised them the possibility of revenge and empowered them after they felt totally overwhelmed by the violence of another.

I recall sitting in a prison in Iraq, watching a prisoner fall apart while recalling his arrest by a Shiite militia and the worry over his mother having no protector and nothing to eat. I sat late at night with a Palestinian girl who wanted to take a rifle and end her life, because she was in such despair over her close friends who had been killed in skirmishes with the Israelis. Her bedroom walls were covered with their ''martyr'' posters.

When talking to the terrorists I was studying, it was always really useful to go as far as possible into the actual context of their lives. As I journeyed through the West Bank and Gaza, I received invitations to avoid the checkpoints and got to do far more interviews by staying overnight in the homes of actual terrorists.

I was terrified at first but decided to accept their hospitable offers. As a result, I learnt so much more.

I found them interacting totally normally with their families and me - yet one of their family members had killed themselves and innocent civilians. They endorsed the killing of innocents yet, on many other levels, they preserved normal family and community values.

I understood that terrorists view themselves as part of a movement and as soldiers for their cause. They don't see their actions as any more wrong than our soldiers judge their killing in combat as wrong.

Of course, there is a huge difference and there is never any justification for terrorism of any type; there is no cause anywhere in the world that justifies targeting and terrorising innocent civilians on its behalf. But, of course, terrorists don't see it that way.

They claim that, due to the imbalances in military might, they must engage in attacking civilians, that civilians are not innocent because they voted in the government whose military or officials are acting against them, or that the civilians themselves are militarised.

I was most enlightened by entering the homes of those I interviewed. When I could see, feel and experience what they live with on a daily basis, and meet them personally, they became so much more understandable.

I also learnt a lot from talking to parents of so-called ''martyrs''. In celebrating their children's actions, these parents often state they are glad their son or daughter ''martyred'' themselves, but in private interviews I learnt it is a lot like interviewing the parent of a soldier.

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They are likely to say something patriotic publicly but, in private, the parents of terrorists are often angry at the group that sent their children, and in deep and enduring traumatic grief. They celebrate in public, but privately are devastated.

Dr Anne Speckhard is an adjunct associate professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University school of medicine and the author of Talking to Terrorists.